Committee fears saffronisation of new textbooks

The Committee for Resisting Saffronisation of Textbooks in Karnataka has expressed the fear that there will be attempts to saffronise new textbooks of class 6 and 9 to be released in the next academic year.

Committee president Suresh Bhat Bakrabail told reporters here on Thursday that the draft text for the new textbooks had not been made public. No time was given to the District Institutes of Education and the Colleges of Teacher Education to discuss the draft and give suggestions. “As it happened with class 5 and 8 textbooks, we fear saffornisation of new textbooks,” he said.

Writer and educationalist Krishna Shastry Balila said the draft of most new textbooks did not conform to the National Curriculum Framework released in 2005. The concept of building cultural neutrality and nurturing critical thinking was missing. The draft of the social science textbook did not reflect the concept of world peace as suggested in the framework. The new textbooks did not discuss cotemporary issues such as globalisation, he said.

The committee asked the Karnataka Textbook Society to provide copies of the new textbooks.